Approval of special review for wellness center is critical

This weeks Editorial from the Trail Gazette

The Estes Valley Planning Commission and the Estes Park Town Board will be dealing with a critical special review in the coming weeks.

The special review involves changes to the original plan for the proposed wellness training center at the Stanley Hotel.

The applicant (Stanley Hotel owner John Cullen) is requesting approval to locate the Wellness Training Center, originally proposed as a separate structure, within the lower level of the accommodations building that is currently under construction. The applicant is also requesting a height variance for the accommodations building.

The Estes Valley Planning Commission will meet at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 9 at Town Hall to consider the special review. It was also accept public comment prior to and at the meeting. The commission will then make a recommendation to approve or deny the special review requests to the Estes Park Town Board.

The Estes Park Town Board will then review the commission's recommendation and continue the special review process at a special meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 15 at Town Hall.

The Town Board's decision will decide the fate of the project.

As we have stated in this space many times before, we fully support this project on many levels - providing jobs, providing increased taxes, providing a new source of customers for our community, and economic diversity, to just name a few.

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We feel the requests for both the center's relocation and increased height (which is nearly the same that was approved for the original wellness center structure) are warranted, necessary and far outweigh any concerns.

This is a unique opportunity for our community, for our businesses, our workforce and our hospital. We must not lose sight of this. We must stay the course as we have to this point.

To kill this project with a denial would be a self-inflicted wound that we might not recover from.

Therefore, we are asking our town leaders to do the right thing and approve this special review.

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